Federally funded school lunches are about to get a lot less healthy
By relaxing the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act’s rules for school lunches, the Trump administration is doing a big favor to the dairy industry — at the expense of children’s health.
School lunches are about to be more dairy-laden — and, as a result, much less healthy.
The new school lunch rules, which roll back Obama-era nutrition standards for federally subsidized school lunches, were first announced in May 2017 by Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue (who has no relation to Perdue chicken, but does have other ties to agribusiness).
Under the new rules, cafeterias no longer have to worry about reducing sodium in school lunches, nor do they have to transition to serving whole grains. Schools can once again offer 1 percent chocolate and strawberry milk — under the previous rules, flavored milks had to be non-fat. (“I wouldn’t be as big as I am today without chocolate milk,” Perdue reportedly said at the time of the announcement.) The Trump administration codified the change last December.
Perdue’s initial changes to the school lunch rules are mostly cosmetic but signal bigger shifts down the line, Vox’s Julia Belluz reported last month. Perhaps most troublingly, the changes are a big handout to the dairy industry, which makes a substantial amount of money from its contracts with public schools and was reportedly struggling under the Obama-era regulations, according to a new report by Bloomberg.
The Trump administration is gutting the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act
Perdue is essentially slowing down the implementation of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010. The law required the National School Lunch Program to use guidelines from the Institute of Medicine to make school lunches healthier. The regulations prioritized whole grains over more processed grains, an emphasis on whole fruits and vegetables, and a reduction in sodium, full-fat milk, and meat. Schools were given 10 years to gradually reduce the amount of sodium in school lunches, with the first phase going into effect in 2014, and the following phase CONTINUE READING: Trump’s school lunch program: How the administration is changing health standards - Vox